Monday, July 15, 2013

The Party is Over or The Corporate Comic Book Game

The George Perez announcement was amazing.
It is not that George has never before left
the big two to do his own thing before, but what George was saying is
what made it such a watershed moment. A
quote from the CBR article from Geogre confirms what I knew “Well, while I have enjoyed considerable professional
and personal success with both Marvel and DC, it was becoming all too evident
that many of the books being produced by both companies seem to be getting more
and more corporate driven. Many of the characters I grew up with were
turning into strangers whose adventures were determined by factors that had
less and less to do with what made a good comic story and more to do with how
these properties can be exploited for other purposes. There's nothing wrong
with that, I guess, but not something that I felt was particularly satisfying
for me as a storyteller.”

At this point we are seeing more and more
evidence how things are rapidly changing at Marvel and DC. The evidence is from
Jerry Ordway’s lament over lack of consistent work, to Matt Fraction doing work
at Image and Greg Rucka walking away from the big two. Add to that Brubaker
saying farewell to Marvel and not going back to DC. It is also young and old
creators walking away from DC (Fialkov and Robinson). You have JMS opening up Joe’s Comics again, Jason
Aaron doing work at Image and Mark Millar walking away from Icon imprint. The
handwriting is not just on the wall it is scrawled across the sky in lights.

The big two are changing the way they do
business. More and more the direction of the books, what types of books are
getting approved and how things are done are being driven by a corporation. Now
the EIC of th

ese companies often played dictator and decided what to do and
what not to do, but an individual is very different from a corporation,
regardless of what our laws tell you. A corporation makes decisions via
committee and is ruled by numbers, it is a soulless entity. We are seeing
evidence that comic writers are really just scripting the individual issues. An
overall storyline is decided upon and the writer job is to make that idea play
out over “x” number of issues. He nay have some latitude in what happens
between point A and point B, but point B will be reached. And oh by the way the
editor or above may change there mind as you are doing it and or need to have
you make a hard detour to handle some marketing stunt they failed to mention or
just came up with. Or the company had purchased an asset (Angela) and we will
now shoe horn that bit into your storyline to serve our need to use this asset.

Now the corporate comic has it plus side
to it as well as it’s down side. The plus is that the direction is not set by
the writer. Therefore if you like the overall plot of the story it no longer
matters as much who is writing the script. When you enjoy Game of Thrones or
Breaking Bad, you are not as concerned with who is writing the script. The
overall story has already been laid out in some level of detail. Many corporate
comics are moving to that model. The problem is that comics have developed a
star system. I have learned that the writer/artist/character combination is
important, now I’m being told it is not a company concern.

DC especially is pushing hard to eliminate
the star system. The star is the character. The attraction is the story itself,
who writes the actual script for the artist to then execute against is not as
important. The comic book “press” and all of the fans are still locked into the
old system. Sure there are exceptions to the rule, with Snyder and Johns being
the DC exceptions, but otherwise whether it is Ales Kot writing Suicide Squad
or Matt Kindt, it doesn’t matter as it is a storyline and story beats that are
already set up by editorial or some joint brain trust (which is said with all
possible sarcasm). This is a radical break from how I have come to perceive
what I want to follow, as Mike Grell’s singular vision for Green Arrow was
something I enjoyed and now it is more about plug and play. Whether this is a
good thing or a bad thing is up to us to judge. For me I find that I’m now down
to just Batman and Detective, Superman Unchained, Wonder Woman and a few other
books. The plug and play does not work for me. I’m enjoying Charles Soule’s
take on Swamp Thing and Azzarello’s take on Wonder Woman. If DC decides that WW
needs to line up more with the stupid Superman and Wonder Woman “supermance”
and a writer like Lobdell is assigned to take it over, I will leave the book.
It is my choice, but it has to be recognized that the Levitz/Berger era is gone
and the corporate comic ideal is in place under the insane hands of
Didio/Harras with the Jim Lee’s house art style prevailing on most books.

Marvel is the same animal at this time as
the velvet glove of Disney is slowing coming down. A big difference is the men
at the helm there are Joe Queseda and Alex Alonso. Alonso came from DC when
story was king. He is smart enough to realize he has to serve his corporate
masters but allows more freedom to his writers. The constant creator summits
are where they say it needs to be a company wide event and it may need to
feature the Inhumans who are perhaps in development for a movie. But it seems
like the writers are allowed to pitch in ideas and they adopt different themes
and develop the multiple spin offs and allow their writers to be still be stars.
It also seems that Marvel is more willing to try out some more singular visions
like Hawkeye and Fury Max. Still be aware that they are still feeding the beast
with multiple events over lapping each other to the point of absurdity.
Avengers vs. X-Men, Children of the Atom, Infinity, Age of Ultron are all
within 12 months of each other I believe. There is no continuity anymore as
evidence by Wolverine who has to be involved in more groups then any character
in history. Captain America
is no longer a person, but just a character to be used in multiple books.

Each company is now more of a slave to the
corporate vision then ever before. Make no mistake that the interest of Disney
and Warner Brothers is no longer in the actual comic book per say; it is in the
ownership and exploitation of the characters. The level of control that each
company imposes may be different, but the people tasked with running the comic
book side of things have to deliver results.

DC seems to have adapted the model that
the editorial side is the boss of all things. For the most part they will set
the story direction and maybe ask for ideas from the writers, but they are
running the show. You have the assignment as long as we ask you for the next
issue of the script. In my view if DC could get away with it they would strip
the creator names off the books altogether again. The old star system is
rapidly fading away. The problem is that in Hollywood the pay structure and compensation
is a lot different then what comic book writers get. In my view if you want to
go with this direction the writers need to be made full time employees or
however it works, more like the pay structure of Hollywood
script writers. It feels like DC wants to have their cake and eat it to.

Marvel is serving Disney more and more and
I expect to see more of a push for Marvel to become more like a DC type of
thing. I believe that Alonso is going to stem the tide as much as possible. I
think he understands that you can do the big events and still keep creators as
stars. He also, in my view, understands that the writers have to be more
involved in plotting out the books and contributing to the story telling. When
I was manager I learned that the more you let an employee have input into their
job the more ownership they have in the process and normally it is a better
quality job.

All of this has led to the huge resurgence
in creator owned comic books. Many of the writers I’m sure are poor fits for a
corporate world and the advent of the internet means that you have access to a
wide audience without the need for a Marvel or DC at your back. Image has
enough of a name to garner you that exposure and they are a company founded by
creators. Therefore Image is willing to step back and just operate as more of a
publisher without getting involved in any ownership. Then you have IDW, BOOM
and Dark Horse that act as publisher and/or agent to market your product
perhaps for a cut of the pie. I of course have no true knowledge of how things
are structured, but believe that creators have more options then ever in trying
to promote their own work and maintain ownership of it.

Of course my entire commentary is
conjecture, but at least from a long time observer of comic book industry, a
fair historian, an ex-retailer and as a person who has worked for major
corporations, it is at least a SWAG as opposed to a WAG.